A Most Worthless Expression

 “Are you doing the dishes in God’s strength? Or are you doing them in your own strength?"

    I heard this in a sermon a while ago. It stuck with me (clearly), but for all the wrong reasons. See I came out of the Charismatic movement where “the green bean” theory of prayer was a real danger. What’s “the green bean” theory of prayer? It’s not original to me, though I can’t properly site who I heard it from because I don’t remember.

    Basically the story goes that a college kid decided he would not take any action without first praying and waiting for the leading of God’s Spirit for an answer. Things went well for a day or two, until one day in the cafeteria he came to a choice between green beans or peas as a vegetable. He asked God which one he should choose. There was no answer. He asked again. Nothing. No sense of divine guidance or strong urge in either direction. And so, holding up the line, this young man stood there frozen in line having come so quickly to the breaking point of his practical theology.

    Since I have this background, no matter who the source is, I’m always on guard against things that treat prayer like a magic spell. Just say the proper incantation in the proper way and you too can convince God to work through you on your behalf. It’s that easy. “Do (it) in God’s strength!” they say, as if that is a resource I control. I am not God after all (thank goodness for that), so how can I know when God is acting through me? He is not me. Demanding that I “do the dishes in God’s strength” is commanding me to rule over His strength. This is presumption: I simply do not have to authority to command his power.

    And before I’m accused of creating a straw-man, I know what is meant is “prayerfully and cheerfully do the dishes in a way that honors God and serves your fellow man.” Maybe my whole complaint stems from the shortcomings of shorthand since that’s all that’s usually meant by this expression? But I’m hesitant to wave the misunderstanding away so easily, having come from a background where that is exactly how people used prayer. Plus, I think thoughtless shorthand often betrays our own thoughtless tendencies. If we thought about some cliches more carefully, we probably wouldn’t use them at all.

    I am not God. I don’t know his motives unless He reveals them to me. And, even knowing Him personally, there is still an element of faith to everything that He does in my life. Even when I can plainly see His hand at work (providing a van for us on the way to the hospital as we’re about to outgrow our SUV with the birth of our 4^th child, for example), I still have to receive that it was Him answering our prayer by faith. There are very few events that occur that can be explicitly and blatantly attributed to him, and these are the types of things that defy the ordinary created order. We call them miracles. And I don’t need a miracle to do the dishes. God has already given me everything I need for that (a sink, running water, soap, dishes, food, mouths to feed, legs that let me stand, hands to scrub with, air to breathe, the expectation that the sun will come up tomorrow so that it’s not a frivolous task, etc.).

    James 4:17 says “...Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” So if someone knows the dishes needs to be done and fails to do them for a sinful reason, we know that’s sin. That’s easy enough to see: no one can argue with it. But the problem we so often have is adding another layer of potential sin that doesn’t need to be there. “Do the dishes in God’s strength,” as if just doing them because you know they need to be done isn’t a good enough reason. No: there’s another potential to fail even in the midst of doing a good and necessary thing, because in our quest to be holy we have to make sin out of things that are not sins so that we can feel puffed up when we do “the exceptional thing” over and above the required thing.

    Again, I know I’ll be accused of being unfair to this expression. I agree that “prayerfully and cheerfully doing the dishes in a way that honors God and serves your fellow man” is a high and good standard. If that’s what meant, just say that instead. But even then, what does it look like when someone’s not doing that? Can someone sinfully do the dishes? Sure they can; by grumbling and complaining the whole time for one. Maybe they’re displaying a bickering, bitter, or downright hostile spirit? Are all of those sins? Yes. Do I need to look anywhere else to rebuke that person other than the overt display of a sinful attitude? No.

    And this is where things fall apart for the dumb expression of “doing (the dishes) in God’s strength.” Is there only one singular expression of “prayerfully and cheerfully doing the dishes?” To some, the answer is yes. It means singing hymns or actively praying or listening to the bible while you do the dishes in order to redeem the time. That’s it. Anything else fails the qualification of “Prayerfully...doing the dishes.” They might make an exception for listening to Lord of the Rings or some other similar thing in the realm of Christian adjacent mediums, but clearly listening to an audio bible is better. When I say “Pietism,” this type of mindset is exactly I mean: life should be one big attempt to look like a Pastor behind a pulpit on Sunday mornings (speaking of which, I wonder why so many women want to be preachers?….).

    But righteousness isn’t so definable. We like to turn it into a simple list of tasks to be done that are the best options at any time rather than the freedom to do whatever it is we want to do so long as it’s done lawfully. There are primarily two ways to garden/landscape: one that grows productive food for nourishment and another that grows useless plants to provide beauty and shade. Is one better than the other? It depends on what you need and what you have available to work with. A flower bed may seem like a waste of time to someone dying for lack of food, but there is no sin in planting a flower-bed if God has given us the means. And grass is pretty impractical when you could have a whole bunch of vegetables growing there. Likewise, listening to Sherlock Holmes when you could be listening to a commentary on Romans seems like a lesser use of our time. But it doesn’t have to be. And sometimes prayer or devotions where there should be work or play is sin. We’re only so obsessed with explicit piety because we live in a culture starving to death from a lack of available righteousness, so we don’t understand the purpose of obedience that doesn’t look like Pastoral ministry.

    Faith hears and acts. Put another way, faith sees that dishes needs to be done and does them, regardless of how it feels. Put another way, faith sees a playground and immediately goes to the slide because you know what it’s there for. You don’t need an excuse to obey God: just do it.

    Another area where this causes trouble is in the area of genuineness. I have actually been told “I knew I needed to do (the right thing) but I didn’t do (the right thing) because I didn’t feel like it so I didn’t want to be a half-hearted liar.” This is a very dangerous and subtle lie stemming from the same rotten root. It is still sinful to do the right thing with the wrong motives, so the immature will knowingly reject “doing the right thing” from some false sense of piety, avoiding the sin that would accompany it. And we all know how important right motives are. Just look at the discernment blogger: he’ll write a piece about how Doug Wilson preaches “Moralism” and “Works-righteousness” because he says things like “this is what you need to do regardless of how you feel about it.” Heck, Wretched accused Vegietales of being a bunch of moralistic stories not worth watching because they never preached the gospel.

    This (“I don’t want to do it so I’d be in sin if I did”) isn’t just some unlikely offshot of adding proper motives as a requirement to doing the right thing either. In the very sermon where it was said “Are you doing the dishes in God’s strength or your own?” it was then added “If you’re doing them in your own strength, it doesn’t count toward eternity.” Excuse me? Doesn’t count toward what in eternity? I am perfectly content with “doing the dishes” coming with the reward of a clean house and clean dishes to use tomorrow, thank you very much. If I get more later, great. If I’m just wasting my time by not doing it in the perfect way, however, I’m simply just not going to do it. I have better ways to waste my time if that’s the case.

    What this is, ultimately, is self-idolatry. We spend so much time looking at our motives that the very thing we think makes us humble has caused us to ascend to the throne to judge over ourselves. I think this is a piece of what Paul was denouncing when he wrote “I do not even judge myself” in 1^st Corinthians chapter 4. He knew his own heart well enough to not have anything against himself and didn't care if he missed something because “it is the Lord who judges me.” This sort of introspection is rarely useful and often a distraction from what actually needs to be done.

    I’m reminded of the song “LARGETHROBBINGPOSITIVEMINDSET” by Bilmuri in this regard: “Maybe no matter what: wonder if I’m good enough? I’m still on the razor’s edge: Was always stuck in my head: Cause I’m starting to think it’s a waste of time to always be stuck underneath my mind.” Basically I'm saying the same thing. There’s wisdom there that this old grumpy hedonist has already had to learn.

    So what’s the point of attacking the expression “Do (it) in God’s strength”? Well, are you doing the dishes in God’s strength? Who cares? If they need done, just do them. Do them with a glad heart, sure. Or do them while you’re a grump. In fact, more often than not, doing the right thing despite your feelings on the matter is the very action that honors God, because it reveals a faith in Him that’s more important than your feelings. You can repent for a bad attitude and it might even correct itself if you just stop hyper-fixating on your own shortcomings. The one thing you can’t do is have clean dishes if they aren’t getting washed. And, I mean, that's really the point of washing the dishes, isn't it?